Meeting your future self: how visualising age changes today’s decisions

Hal Hershfield’s experiments with aged faces and why we often treat our future self as a stranger

2 min read

Translated from the Albanian original by the editors. Shqip

Download PDF Share
Illustration: a path stretching towards the horizon, a symbol of our future self
Original illustration by the lexoshpejt editors. Not a historical photograph or object.
Settings

Line spacing

Typeface

Appearance

When we think of ourselves 20 or 30 years from now, we often think of another person: someone who will find it easier to save, to exercise, to eat well. This future person seems distant, almost a stranger. And for strangers we usually sacrifice less.

The brain and the future self

The American psychologist Hal Hershfield has studied this idea for more than a decade. In some brain-imaging studies, when people thought about themselves ten years on, activity in certain brain areas resembled that when they thought about a stranger more than that when they thought about their present self. People in whom this difference was greater tended to choose immediate rewards over delayed ones more often.

The experiment with aged faces

In a series of experiments published in 2011, Hershfield and his colleagues created digital avatars of participants, some with their present face and some aged by computer to look as they would around the age of 70. Then they asked them to decide how much of a hypothetical sum they would put into a retirement savings account.

Those who had seen their aged face chose to save more than those who had seen only their present face. Meeting the future self made it more real, and caring for it seemed more natural.

Your future self is not a stranger. It is the same heart, a little later.

The limits

The experiments measured decisions in the laboratory, often with hypothetical money. We do not know how long the effect lasts or how much real behaviour changes over years. Other studies have found similar effects, but not always as strong. Even so, the idea is useful as a tool for reflection.

Exercises to bring your future self closer

  1. Write a letter from yourself in 20 years. What would they thank you for? What would they wish you had done differently?
  2. Visualise an ordinary day at the age of 70: where you are, with whom, how your body feels.
  3. Before a decision, ask: how would my self in ten years see this?
  4. Take small automatic steps, such as a small monthly saving, so that your future self does not depend on daily willpower.

Sources and further reading

  1. Hershfield, H. E., Goldstein, D. G., Sharpe, W. F. et al. (2011). Increasing saving behavior through age-progressed renderings of the future self. Journal of Marketing Research, 48(SPL), S23–S37. doi:10.1509/jmkr.48.SPL.S23
  2. Hershfield, H. (2023). Your Future Self. New York: Little, Brown Spark. WorldCat

Read on